


but it's uncomfortably near

by deuteroscopies



Series: the prophet and the king [22]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Demonic Possession, M/M, Mortality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:01:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21829405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deuteroscopies/pseuds/deuteroscopies
Summary: Faye, the witch who Ephram sees as a sister, goes into an unnatural heat and hunts him to try and force him to impregnate her. In the process, she strips him of his magic, leaving the way clear for the demon inside Ephram, Anaxis, to gain ascendancy. But without the healing ability of Ephram's witch magic, it means his body won't be able to withstand the demon inside it. He tells Freddie of the secret, dark thoughts he's had about his fairy since watching him be assaulted in the Trapper memory.
Relationships: Freddie Watts/Ephram Pettaline
Series: the prophet and the king [22]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1551673





	but it's uncomfortably near

**Author's Note:**

> > Freddie Watts = Tom Hardy FC, Ephram Pettaline = Boyd Holbrook FC. These stories are set in the supernatural town of Soapberry Springs, in the Pacific Northwest. Freddie is a fairy con man from London, with cobalt-coloured dragonfly wings and silver fairy dust, who has a Japanese Chin familiar named Oliver; Ephram is a witch from impoverished East Kentucky who shares his body with a demon called Anaxis and has green magic of his own.
>> 
>> [the prophet and the king 'verse tumblr](http://theprophetandtheking.tumblr.com/)   
> 

“Freddie? Ruby? Either of you’ns home?” Ephram spun his keys into the dish on the entrance-way table, lifting his legs one at a time to tug off his shoes and drop them where he stood. “I need to talk to you, it’s important but don’t worry it ain’t as bad as it seems, just I want you to be prepared for when you see me okay?” His voice echoed after he stopped bellowing, and Ephram wiped his sleeve over his damp forehead. A quick glance into the mirror over the table confirmed the worst: his eyes were whited-over, the usual sign that Anaxis was in control of his body. The moment either of his partners saw him, they'd know what had happened. But there was nothing for it. They needed to know.  
  
Tired, but thankfully clear-headed - no dizziness; no headache to speak of, shy of a dull increase in pressure behind his eyes - Freddie, still clad in his pyjamas at this time of the morning, came out of the kitchen with Ollie at his heels, holding a mug of tea and frowning slightly.  
  
Ephram hadn’t come home at all the night before - and, while Freddie understood intellectually that police-work was in no way a nine-to-five sort of a job, he didn’t think he would ever really come to the point where he’d blithely be able to accept being made to spend the night without his husband.  
  
And this morning - given how rubbish he’d been feeling of late - he was rather resentful of his noble sacrifice on Soapberry Springs’ behalf.

“What’s not as bad as it seems?” the fairy called with an edge of worry to his voice as he padded through the living room on bare feet, heading towards the foyer where Ephram stood. “Did something happen last night while you were on duty? Are you hurt?”  
  
But Freddie froze as soon as he reached the hallway, Ollie skidding to a halt beside him, just gaping at Ephram; not quite sure what he was seeing - and absolutely petrified that it was exactly as bad as he thought.  
  
“Ephram,” he murmured softly, carefully, “-sweetheart, what’s happened to your eyes?”  
  
His heart leapt at Freddie’s wonderful flannelly voice, even sounding faintly troubled as it did. Ephram waited where he was until Freddie reached him, not wanting to come in any further in case his husband wasn’t comfortable with that. Or Ollie, for that matter, considering the reaction the haughty little Chin had at the sight of him. In a way, that eased Ephram’s worry; Ollie would guard Freddie viciously with the demon around.  
  
“It’s Anaxis,” Ephram said, still maintaining distance. “But I’m here too, honey – it ain’t in control. I dunno what exactly made it come to the fore, but–”  
  
Ephram shook his head, and when he looked at Freddie it was clear that Anaxis was taking over speaking duties. “He’s not likely to figure it out, either,” the demon said in its silky tones. “Credit where credit’s due, Freddie _daaaaaahling_ , you have made the little dear step up his game and feel like he can achieve things, but brain-wise he’s working at a deficit. He’s the human version of Finding Dory.”  
  
Anaxis brushed itself off, saying more briskly, “Something's happened to compromise Ephram's ability to keep me fully locked away, but he's got enough juice left to keep me from taking over entirely. So here I stand, dressed like a gay rodeo star and unable to have my way. It’s not much fun for me, I assure you.”  
  
Despite the cold sick feeling in the pit of his stomach, the deep and pervading combination of hatred and fear that he felt for the demon, Freddie knew there was nothing to be gained from letting any of that show. Or by squabbling with this piece of filth. By goading it. Or by weeping and gnashing his teeth. There was no winning, no triumph - the loathsome thing shared Ephram’s body, and thus, its pique could only result in Ephram’s suffering.  
  
And Ephram had already suffered enough at its whims.  
  
“Oh,” Freddie said evenly, casually, keeping his revulsion at hearing the demon’s oily voice ooze out from between his sweet husband’s lips pushed down as deep as he could, and banished from his face, “-I think we both know _precisely_ how much Ephram is capable of achieving. Because if he was really the dolt you pretend him to be, there’d be no joy for you in torturing him, would there?”  
  
“You’re as fond of Ephram as you are,” the fairy continued, still blandly pleasant, “-because you know _exactly_ the quality of the man you want to bring low. You wouldn’t waste your time otherwise.”  
  
Down at Freddie’s feet, Oliver was bristling, his eyes locked on Ephram - Anaxis? both of them? - but the little Chin stayed quiet, taking his cues from his fairy; and for that, Freddie was grateful. Because whatever this was - however it had come about - Ephram was still present. Freddie could… _feel_ him, somehow. And that wasn’t something to be dismissed, or discounted.  
  
Anaxis was secondary to Ephram. It was a leech. A parasite. And that meant it couldn’t be allowed to control the narrative. To define the conversation, and sweep Ephram aside.  
  
Freddie wouldn’t have it.  
  
His bound hand held in a loose fist, the fairy moved closer. “Now,” he said in a clipped, but still politely conversational, tone, reaching up to touch Ephram’s face gently, “-how do I change the channel, hm? Because I want to kiss my husband hello. I missed him last night.”  
  
Freddie held Ephram/Anaxis’ gaze steadily, refusing to let the unnatural milky white where there should have been Ephram’s beautiful blue cow him, and carried on. “When we’re through saying good morning, you’re more than welcome to tell me all about whatever has created this current disaster - and even how, given what I remember to be your affection for silk, it is that you feel in a position to cast heteronormative aspersions on Ephram’s dress sense - but until then, you can shut it, yeah?”  
  
“Budge up and give Ephram back the microphone. I’d like to speak to my man.”  
  
Anaxis eyed Freddie for a long moment before it laughed, shaking its head. “Well, you got my number there, Freddie Watts. You’re right, I _am_ fond of the boyo, although I gotta say, you don’t see me writing enraptured screeds to Ephram’s quality. A little restraint would do you well.” Dropping to a confidential tone, Anaxis said, “I’ll let you in on a little bit of demon truth, Freddie, because I like you, I really do. For a shallow-as-hell fairy you’re great fun. I’ll miss you when Ephram moves on. Or clocks you one or goes a little too far in the bedroom and you’ll have to skedaddle.”  
  
The smile that the demon had creased Ephram’s face with by this point was truly horrific, devoid of any human emotion, stretched too far. “The reason I’m so attached to Ephram is because of his _endurance_. He’s like a carthorse! He can get beaten to shit physically and emotionally and he still keeps plodding forward. Not because he has hope, Freddie, it’s nothing like that, no nice little moral for your next hagiography on St. Ephram the Dim. No, it’s because he thinks that _God_ –” his lip snarled up at the word, “–put him on this earth to suffer for some sin, some intrinsic wrongness, and it would be wrong to do anything other than endure.” The demon winked. “Think on it.”  
  
And just like that, it was Ephram back in control, even though he seemed faintly unsure what had just happened. “Freddie,” he said, and then reached for his husband, giving him the kiss that Freddie had wanted and then a few more besides. Ephram wrapped his arms around Freddie tight, rocking with him. “It’s gone quiet,” he said, puzzled. “I mean, not gone totally, but it’s … resting? Feels strange. Ain’t never felt it like this before.” He was getting increasingly more distraught, although he didn’t realize it; the disconnections that were going on inside him made everything slightly confused. “It ain’t how it’s usually, Freddie, I’m–”  
  
 _Scared_ , was the word. But Ephram choked it back, pressing his nose and mouth against Freddie’s shoulder.  
  
There would always be a part of Freddie that lived in fear of the moment that his witch would look at him and realize that he had never truly been worthy of his time and energy; his affection or his love. A part of him that would always remember, with perfect clarity, the way Ephram had said that he could be without him; the way he’d been willing to hand Freddie over to Elizabeth and be nothing more than ‘friends’. But, despite the demon’s best effort to sow its seeds of mistrust, despite its desire to destabilize Freddie’s love for his husband, it had miscalculated. Gone too far with its sleazy implications, and over-egged the manipulation pudding.  
  
Because Freddie had no fear of Ephram _himself_. He never had, and he never would. Whatever violence his husband was capable of - and Freddie wasn’t so naive as to think that he wasn’t; he saw Ephram quite clearly, no matter what Anaxis claimed to the contrary - the fairy, who had never had any faith to speak of in anything other than himself, believed wholeheartedly that Ephram would never _ever_ hurt him. Not like that.  
  
And so, when the demon smiled, twisting Ephram’s handsome features into something grotesque, carrying on and likening him to nothing more than a beast of burden - in both mind and deed - Freddie summoned all the wherewithal he had and refused to allow himself to react to any of it; affecting instead, a level of boredom that he hoped would rankle, and saying nothing at all until Anaxis ceded control back to Ephram. And the moment it did, the moment Ephram was the one looking back at him again, Freddie pulled his witch tightly into his arms and kissed him, holding him close.  
  
Wanting Ephram to lean on him as much as he needed to. Wanting to show him that he could.  
  
Petting Ephram’s hair, the fairy murmured, “What can I do for you, sweetheart? How can I help?” He kissed his husband’s temple, and squeezed him tighter. “I love you so much, darling… you’re always so strong, and I’m so proud of you…”  
  
They were quiet for a moment, Freddie just rocking Ephram gently, before asking, “Do you know where it’s come from, love?” in a soft voice. “Can you tell me what happened?”  
  
“Because I need to keep you safe from that thing, Ephram. It can’t have you - not even this much. You’re mine.”  
  
For all that his head was spinning, Ephram heard Freddie’s words – his encouragement, his assurances, his love – and he clung to those and to Freddie himself to stay afloat. But he couldn’t stay upright, and folded down to the floor with Freddie, keeping his head pressed against his husband’s shoulder.  
  
“I … Faye went into her witch heat,” Ephram began, convinced that Freddie knew what that was, “and I was with her to try and help her through it. She went deep into this one, though, and all her body was telling her was that she needed to ... to get with child. To get pregnant. And since I was right there, she wanted me to do it." He stopped, swallowing, and rubbed a hand over his face. "It was like there was nothing else in her mind, like she had these primal impulses and those were all she could listen to, no matter how much I tried to convince her otherwise. But she let me have one out. She let me run, and she said she'd hunt after me, and if I got away then okay, but if she caught me--"  
  
Ephram curled closer to Freddie, his voice bleak and deeply shaken. “I managed to keep ahead of her for most of it. By the time she caught up with me her heat had gotten weaker, she could think again and she healed me up from how she - um, all the injuries I got when she was chasing me, but then Faye wouldn’t let me go. I don't know why but she wouldn't, maybe _couldn't_ let me go, she used our gold ley line magic, the one we share, she used it to keep me there. It was fucking awful, Freddie, that magic’s never hurt me before. But it did this time.” He drew a shuddering breath, fingers kneading fitfully against Freddie’s side. “I kept trying to get away, it drove me to hands and knees and then Faye....”  
  
Sitting back slightly, Ephram rubbed his sleeve across his wet face, a clumsy childlike gesture. “The way a ley line works,” he said just in case Freddie didn’t know (his fairy found witch magic to be strange and irregular, not trusting any but Ephram’s own green magic), “is that when one witch uses too much of the energy, it affects what-all witches is on the same line.” He paused to cough into his sleeve, the cloth coming away with spots of blood that Ephram didn’t notice.  
  
“Faye, she…” Ephram’s eyes clouded with lingering confused hurt. “She got herself a branch and shoved it through herself–” his hand brushed his abdomen to show where, “–and told me to run. But she din’t recall how the ley works. How her drawing that much power to heal herself would have an effect on me.”  
  
Shoving against Freddie again, Ephram finished, “It just about turned me inside out, Freddie.” His voice had shrunk down to barely more than a whisper that was mostly breath and an unmistakable, pervasive fear. “It took me apart. I would've…if Anaxis didn’t get me up and moving, I’d be lyin’ out there now. It would've killed me.” Ephram gave a moan that sounded like it took his entire spirit with it, sodden with the same uncomprehending, lost grief that he’d first felt as a boy being hurt and not knowing why he deserved it. “She would’ve killed me. It took a demon to save me from my own _sister_.”  
  
Freddie shifted slightly to make them more comfortable on the floor, holding Ephram tightly; wanting to keep him cradled in his arms for as long as his husband would allow it, hating the idea of letting him go again. But when Ephram started to speak, to explain, the fairy’s jaw immediately tightened.  
  
Faye. Of fucking course, it was something to do with Faye.  
  
Because for a woman who wasted no opportunity to proclaim herself more powerful and capable and dangerous than ninety-eight percent of the people who happened to cross her path, somehow those attributes never quite managed to materialize when put to the test.  
  
Somehow Ephram always came away from her worse for the wear.  
  
Freddie frowned in confusion at the notion of a ‘witch heat’ though, his own knowledge of witch magic not inclusive of that particular idea, and finding the concept more than a little repellent. But before he could ask Ephram to clarify, his darling had carried on, only managing to make the story more wrenching with each additional word. “She… she _hunted_ you?” Freddie murmured, gathering Ephram closer and tighter, petting his hair and rocking him gently, “Sweetheart…”  
  
But he trailed off again as his witch kept talking, not wanting to disrupt him; just listening instead, in silent horror, to what his poor lover had been subjected to. To what he’d endured.  
  
The more Freddie came to learn about ley lines, the more he was glad to be a fairy and free of the need for them himself. They seemed to be volatile, unpredictable things - willful; almost sentient - and it frightened him deeply to think of his husband as connected to them; dependent on them.  
  
Holding Ephram by the chin, Freddie pulled a hair from his own head and glamoured it into a flannel, taking over the task of carefully wiping his husband’s face, as he considered what the ley magic had done - just having made up his mind to ask Iann more about the horrible things, to find out if there was some way they could be circumvented - when Ephram coughed into his sleeve, leaving specks of blood behind on the fabric. And instantly Freddie’s train of thought was lost, the fairy staring down at the ichor helplessly, unsure of what to do.  
  
He could heal Ephram, he knew - but with Anaxis so close to the surface, and its connection to Freddie still not entirely severed, he wasn’t sure if he should. If that sort of intervention would only make the situation worse.  
  
He looked up into Ephram’s eyes questioningly but never managed to get the query out; his rage at Faye, when he heard what she’d done, temporarily blotting out everything else, and confirming what Freddie had believed to be true since he’d first begun to understand the scope of her self-righteousness: that Faye’s only interest was in her own ‘noble sacrifice’. That she’d trade her brother ten times over in exchange for the opportunity to ‘suffer’ on an operatic scale.  
  
Freddie pulled Ephram tightly into his arms again and held him close, fury shaking his voice as he spoke in a low rumble close to his husband’s ear. “You listen to me,” he said, “-that _thing_ didn’t save you. It saved _itself_. Don’t give it credit that it doesn’t deserve, love. Don’t forget what it is.”  
  
The fairy pressed his lips to Ephram’s temple. “You’re alive because you’re meant to be,” he went on, “Because the world would be an infinitely darker and uglier place without you - and God, or the universe, or whatever you want to call it, knows that.”  
  
“You’re not allowed to leave me, Ephram. When we were sixteen, we promised we’d always come home to each other - do you remember? And you did. You came home to me. Because we belong to one another, sweetheart - and that has power; it can’t be dismissed…”  
  
Freddie buried his nose in Ephram’s dirty sweaty hair. “I love you so much,” he said, “More than anything else…”  
  
“And I’ll deal with Faye, alright? She’s not going to hurt you again. I won’t bloody let her.”  
  
“Yeah,” Ephram said, watery and small. “Yeah, we did, we promised that, yeah. We promised each other to always come back. We promised.” The repetition took on a chant-like quality, self-soothing and grounding as he stayed tight against Freddie, listening devoutly to what his husband was telling him. That he deserved a life on this earth, that he even made it a little better. Ephram wanted that etched into his bones to keep, to have it there for when he’d need it.

Freddie rocked his husband gently, murmuring, “That’s right, sweetheart, we did. We promised we’d be each other’s homes; promised we’d never let the other one go. And we’re not going to.”  
  
“You’re mine, Ephram. You’re the most precious thing I’ve ever had, and I won’t be without you. I can’t be.”  
  
If Ephram had been a little more conscious of what was going on, a little less fractured, he would have been astonished that his fastidious darling was holding him so close in the disgusting state he was in. But as it was Ephram was only grateful to have Freddie near, solid and familiar and comforting, protective. “When she healed me up, after the hunt, when she healed me, I had to go to my white place inside me where I go when things hurt too much. You know what I mean." Ephram had mentioned it before to Freddie: that tiny place of solace he'd guarded and hung on to inside his mind, where he could mentally put himself when things got too bad, when he'd been in prison enduring the beatings and the rapes, when Anaxis had taken over and used and tortured his body, that quiet blank white room where Ephram could turn his consciousness off and survive what was happening to him. "And then Faye, she asked me where I gone, and I had to tell her about my white place and now it’s _gone_ , Freddie.” Ephram’s voice had mashed down milk-bland, flat as if it had been pressed between the pages of a book. “She asked me and I had to say it and now Anaxis _knows_ and it’s gone. It was the only thing inside me that I had to myself and now it’s gone, I ain’t got nothin’ left.”  
  
Ephram coughed in his throat, the fox bark of it trapped behind his closed lips. “That wasn’t Faye’s fault, she couldn’t know,” he said, curling his fingers tighter into Freddie’s clothes. “She couldn’t know, nobody knew, it was just …” He shook his head, unable to put it into words. It was just one of the kind of things that happened to him, how it seemed sometimes like every scrap that he’d managed to fight to keep got slowly peeled away by somebody who said they loved him.  
  
“I ain’t angry with her,” Ephram said. “I’m scared of her.” He opened and closed his mouth, tasting the words and finding them right. “I don’t know why but she keeps … she keeps hurting me, and then she’s always got some reason for doing it that hurts worse to hear than what she actually did to me, and I dunno why it always comes down to that, why in her doings I always end up being sacrificed. And always should put that aside to show sorrow over Faye’s pain. I don’t, I don’t …” Ephram dug his face against the hollow of Freddie’s throat, trusting his husband to explain, to make sense of it, to collect Ephram’s disjointed confessions and piece them together into some reason for all this.  
  
“She promised Cheyenne she’d take care of me for her,” Ephram said, bleak and wounded. “She promised my big sister she would, Freddie, and look what she's _done_ _to me_.”  
  
As Ephram went on, his voice so… _depleted_ , Freddie’s heart broke again for the man that he loved; staggered that one boy - because that’s what Ephram had been when pain had become a constant presence in his life - could be made to suffer so much; could stripped right down to the bone, over and over again.  
  
“I’m so sorry, my darling,” the fairy said, tears pricking at his eyes, mourning the loss of Ephram’s one safe place, his single untouched sanctuary, “If I could give it back to you, I would. But I can’t.” He stroked Ephram’s hair, and wrapped his arms tighter. “All I can do is hold you.”  
  
“Which is so painfully inadequate I can hardly bear it.”  
  
Freddie sighed softly. “And you have every right in the world to be frightened of Faye, sweetheart. After what she’s done to you, that’s the only reaction a sane man would have.” His jaw clenched again. “Believe me,” he said tightly, “I’m more than angry enough with her for both of us.”  
  
“I think…” the fairy went on, seriously and quietly; carding his fingers through the filthy blond hair at the nape of his husband’s neck, and resting his cheek against the top of Ephram’s head, “…that Faye’s priority is always that she be seen as ‘noble’. I think, that whether she admits it or not, that’s always her motivating factor.”  
  
“And her image of herself as this unselfish, righteous martyr who gives everything for her loved ones - an image she can lean on, and polish, and use as a justification to do whatever she bloody well likes - supersedes everything else. Even you, my love.”  
  
“And she’ll never see that her ‘sacrifices’ are made on the backs of the people she professes to care for.”  
  
The raw painful quality of Ephram’s voice as he spoke about Faye’s broken promises to his sister, Cheyenne, back in Kentucky, was so wretched that Freddie nearly broke down himself. But somehow, he didn’t. Instead he summoned all the strength he’d ever drawn from the arms, and the love, of his husband, and took a deep breath, determined to give it all back. “I know, sweetheart,” he breathed sadly, “She’s never once taken care of you like she should have. All she’s ever done is use you to grandstand on.”  
  
Freddie cuddled Ephram closer, as though he were trying to gather him into his body; like he might be better able to protect him there. “You’ve been so badly hurt, love,” he murmured, “And I don’t know how to make any of it better…”  
  
“But I promise you, I intend to spend the rest of your life trying.”  
  
“No, Freddie, honey, no–” Ephram pushed up to hold Freddie’s face, kiss him all over before curling against him again, “–you holding me is the furthest thing from inadequate, it’s … it’s a _new_ place for me to be safe. _You’re_ my new place to be safe, Freddie.” Ephram sighed, his body slumping again. “I had to have the white place because there weren’t nobody there for me. But now I have you, I have _you_ , honey, to always come back to, to be my home.”  
  
It was only a drop of balm against the scraped-raw nakedness of Ephram’s shattered emotions, but he was a man who’d learned to be grateful for the smallest of kindnesses. He greeted that idea wholeheartedly, letting the thought of it spread out, soothe him, like it was the silver-gold oil from their shared universe.  
  
Content for the moment, Ephram soaked up the feel of Freddie’s cheek against his head, loving and tender, and listened as his husband outlined clearly and precisely how he saw the situation. He didn’t know how to feel about it. On one hand Ephram was miserable to be forced to acknowledge that what he wanted, what he felt, wasn’t really that important to Faye except in relation to _her_ wants and feelings; on the other hand it felt so good, so validating to hear Freddie put words to something Ephram had felt but didn’t trust himself about.  
  
But here was Freddie helping to sort out the tatters of Ephram’s inability to recognize when he’d hung on too long, when he’d forgiven too many times. He was safe, Ephram reminded himself. With Freddie he was safe.  
  
So after a few moments of chewing his lip in anxiety, Ephram sat upright again to face his husband. “Freddie,” he said, worry and guilt lacing his words, “I went … after I finally got away, after Anaxis healed me up, it … I … I went to see Bellamy.” He looked down, ashamed of his own weakness, mumbling, “I talked to her before, I was gonna try and see if we could maybe be friends again. She meant so much to me. She meant … I mean, how could I … I couldn’t cut her off cold. I went to see her. Nothing bad happened, I was so tired but I needed to get myself together before I came home to you, Freddie, honey.”  
  
Freddie was honestly grateful that Ephram had looked down and away from him, after he’d dropped his bomb about Bellamy. Which was appalling enough in its own right; that he could actually be glad that his husband couldn’t meet his eyes - but he _was_. Because he knew, in the moments that followed that admission, that every single ounce of horror he felt, and every last drop of insecurity it inspired, had been written all over his face. Broadcast clearly from his eyes.  
  
And Ephram didn’t need that now. The guilt and shame were already rolling off his poor darling in waves, and no matter what Freddie felt - no matter the scope and the breadth of his fear, and anger, and hurt - his witch wasn’t capable of dealing with any of it in his current state.  
  
“I…” he started, his voice strained and small, “Ephram, I think we need to talk about Bellamy later, love. Because…”  
  
The fairy forced himself to take a deep, slow breath and let it out again. “Because I have things I want to say about it - and about her - but this isn’t the right time for it.”  
  
Freddie reached up and touched Ephram’s face, his eyes full of everything he couldn’t bring himself to say, and the ferocity of his love for the man in front of him. “You’re here now, with me, where you should be - and that’s what I want us to focus on, yeah? And later, when you’ve had some sleep, then we’ll talk about the rest.”  
  
Freddie wanted to demand to know why and how Ephram could even consider being near that woman again after what she’d done, the way she'd welcomed the demon into her life, exalted its existence over Ephram's so long as it kept her fucked and fulfilled. How he could forgive her and want to be her friend when she was every bit as loathsome, as unforgivable, as the demon was.  
  
He wanted to know how Ephram could take Anaxis - a conscious, present Anaxis - directly to her, after all the atrocities she’d visited on him; the betrayals and the indifference to his pain. How he could risk himself like that when he’d promised to always come home to Freddie; when he’d promised not to hurt himself deliberately.  
  
Freddie wanted to know why Ephram had needed Bellamy the night before, and not _him_. He wanted to know why she still mattered. Why Ephram had ever even loved her at all.  
  
To know if he loved her _still_ , and what that meant.  
  
But more than anything, he wanted to make Ephram understand his own value. He wanted him to know, and to feel, how important and necessary and loved he was.  
  
So Freddie swallowed back all his sharp, jagged, desperate words - choking on them slightly - and pulled his sweetheart back into his arms.  
  
“I’m glad you told me,” he said raggedly, “I always want you to tell me, yeah? Anything. Everything. Even when you know I won’t like it.” He sighed. “ _Especially_ then.”  
  
Ephram uncurled his legs, sprawling them out on the floor as Freddie drew him in again. “I will,” he promised. “I’ll tell you everything always. Even when … even when you’ve got stuff going on too.” He curved one big hand over Freddie’s hip, hanging on there. It would have been impossible – even in Ephram’s dazed state – to miss the effect his confession had had on his husband. He’d suspected that might be the result of his belated candour, but that big a secret seemed like the very worst thing to introduce at this point. Ephram would, at the moment, answer every and any question Freddie might have in the hopes that his clever, insightful lover could make better sense of Ephram’s inner workings than the witch himself could.  
  
“And if I’m gonna do that, Freddie, tell you everything even if you’d be upset to hear it, then you gotta do the same.” Ephram looked up, the tip of his nose brushing Freddie’s jaw. “I need you to tell me what you’re thinking, I ain’t too weak to hear it. And I don’t reckon I could get a stitch of sleep nohow.”  
  
He tucked his head back down again. “Talk to me, honey, please,” Ephram urged. “It might – heh – it might stir some warm up in me if I get mad when you holler at me.” The jest was as colourless as Ephram’s voice, but he nudged his head in entreaty against Freddie all the same.  
  
Freddie closed his eyes for a moment, and let out another sigh, wishing that he could say no - and knowing he couldn’t. He found it nearly impossible at the best of times to refuse Ephram anything; and now, with his witch lying in his arms, battered and bruised in all the ways that he could be, Freddie couldn’t help but give him anything he asked for.  
  
Even this.  
  
“Alright,” the fairy said quietly, “If you’re certain that’s what you want, love.”  
  
He was silent for a moment, marshaling his thoughts, trying to keep calm and even, and then said, “Why, Ephram? Why would you go there - to _her_ \- after _everything_ she’s put you through? Why would you give her the opportunity to hurt you? How can her friendship be worth that?”  
  
“She’s a monster, Ephram. She’s a repulsive horror who’s hurt you in ways that I can’t even bring myself to articulate - and I can’t understand why you would go to her rather than come home to me.”  
  
“Why you would risk yourself that way knowing that Anaxis is so close to the surface, and that she’s still _in love_ with the fucking thing?!” Freddie’s voice was trembling slightly as he fought to keep his emotions contained. “Why would you give her another chance?! You keep talking about what she meant to you, but-”  
  
The fairy cut himself off and took a deep breath, in danger of losing his tightly wound control. “Just tell me, what _did_ she mean then? What does she _still_ mean? Explain to me why I’m supposed to accept that she’s worth more than you are. Why you believe that. Because she’s not, Ephram! She’s fucking _malignant_.”  
  
His jaw clenched, Freddie carried on. “I love you more than anything in this world, and I have no idea how to make you understand that not everyone is entitled to your forgiveness. That you were _not_ put here to suffer.” He hugged Ephram tighter, not even aware he was doing it. Clinging to him as though at any moment someone might come and snatch him away.  
  
“You promised me you wouldn’t hurt yourself deliberately,” he said, his voice brittle, “-and now you’re breaking that promise.”  
  
“The least you can do is tell me _why_.”  
  
“She _is_ a monster,” Ephram agreed, speaking gently, spongily. “And so am I.” He shook his head a little to forestall Freddie’s inevitable objection, continuing, “It ain’t like Anaxis is completely separate from me. I can’t just blame everything on the demon all the time. There was things I did in prison, Freddie, things I did to other people. It’s gladiator school in there, that’s what they call it, and that’s what I learned. And sometimes I _liked_ it, what I could do to other men with my teeth and fists and feet and how much blood I could get out of em.”  
  
He kicked one heel against the floor restlessly, going on, “I never have to worry about disappointing her, not in that way. She don’t care what I done. That meant so much to me, Freddie, when we met. There’s so many ugly things I got locked up inside me, Freddie, God, _so many_ of em, and they ain’t all a matter of survival, there’s a fair amount of em I did just because I wanted to fuckin’ feel something.”  
  
Ephram dug one shoulder against Freddie’s chest, the restlessness starting to outpace the numbness. “She ain’t in love with it no more,” he offered. “When I shored up at her place, she didn’t, I could tell, she don’t wanna be with it. She changed, she made herself better, I can’t stay angry with her.” Ephram repeated haplessly, “…when people change, you should forgive them. Everybody needs to be forgiven if they really are repentant. That’s what I believe.”  
  
Sighing, Ephram reached up to hook one hand over Freddie’s shoulder, drawing comfort from the physicality of Freddie, the firm strong feel of him, even his anger. “I didn’t rather go to her than to you, Freddie,” he said, apology lacing his voice. “I just _did._ I … there wasn’t much thought behind it, even though Bellamy thought I wanted to avoid you so’s Anaxis wouldn’t hurt you and would hurt _her_ instead.” That, at least, was familiar ground: Bellamy and Faye and Ruby and Elizabeth, all letting him know that if Anaxis wanted to be violent, they'd be there to take it. Like it was their special job, this array of women eager to give themselves to the demon to brutalize, never mind that _Ephram_ would still be cognizant of what was happening but helpless to prevent it. No, their martyrdom was too exciting to resist.

“I ain’t … trying to be self-destructive, I promise.” Ephram’s body spasmed in Freddie’s arms involuntarily, heels scrabbling against the floor before he sagged again.  
  
“Most people,” he said in a slow measured pace that told of how often he’d mulled this over, “are worth more than me. I ain’t saying that to be dramatic or sorry for myself or whatever. It’s facts. And with a demon inside me, Freddie, that just makes it even _more_ true.”  
  
Freddie wasn’t sure he’d ever been so angry - so _blindingly_ ragingly frustrated and appalled - in his entire life. He hadn’t known he could be this angry. And it took all of his effort, all of his willpower, just to keep himself from bellowing at his husband. To keep from shaking him.  
  
“You’re being willfully simplistic and you know it,” Freddie spat, “You’re talking about a time and place where you were _seventeen_ and set on by men intent on hurting you and using you, Ephram - of _course_ you wanted to hurt them in return! To hurt anyone and _everyone_ who came near you, probably! Why wouldn’t you? Why wouldn’t you claw back every single drop of power and control you could - in whatever way you could - just to keep from feeling helpless? Feeling victimized. That doesn’t make you a monster - that makes you a _child_ desperate to survive however you could. Not just physically, but mentally. Emotionally.”  
  
“Because tell me- do you feel that way now?” Freddie demanded, “When you look at me, do you fantasize about hurting me? Bloodying me just because you can? Do you think about doing it to Ruby? To the people in this town that you’ve promised to protect as their Sheriff? Because you’re that man too, Ephram. A man who takes pride in being a husband, and an officer of the law. And it’s fucking offensive to hear you separate yourself from that.”  
  
Freddie felt his witch shift in his arms, not trying to get away, but agitated somehow, restless - and the fairy tightened his grip; using strength he didn’t often call upon to hold him still. “So don’t fucking talk to me about Bellamy and how fucking freeing it is to never be able to disappoint her - because that’s rubbish too. The world is full of darkness, Ephram. Ugliness, and evil, and cold bleak horror. Everyone breathing is capable of it somehow.” His eyes narrowed. “The difference is that Bellamy wants you to wallow in it. She revels in it, and wants you to as well. She’s disappointed when you don’t. When you reach for something better. When you choose to rise above it.”  
  
“Do you honestly think,” Freddie went on, his voice raw and strident, “-that I don’t know who you are? That I spend my time loving you, sitting here in quiet judgment? There is a world of difference between you and Bellamy Barnes - and if you can’t see that, if you won’t look and acknowledge it, then I don’t know you like I think I do.”  
  
The fairy took a deep breath. “I love you, Ephram - and you can _never_ disappoint me - but that doesn’t mean I’m content to let you piss your life away either.”  
  
“I’m a thief, and a whore, and a killer myself - but I will drag you kicking and screaming to better if I have to.”  
  
“I mean, do you even hear yourself?” Freddie asked, incredulous and bitter, “Where’s the rational man I love gone? Bellamy hasn’t changed! How can you even get those words out?! How many times do you need her to rip you to shreds before you see sense?! She _can’t_ be forgiven! Or- wait… do we forgive Lizzie then? Faye? Because if saying sorry is all that’s required, if feeling badly later is good enough, then let’s just forgive them all! Shall I call Martin? He was sorry too, in his way. He loves me, Ephram - is that good enough?!”  
  
His husband twitched frighteningly in his arms, and Freddie held him tighter, his muscles straining. Tight enough to hurt, to make his arms ache. “ _No-one_ is worth more than you are,” he said finally, quietly, firmly. “Not to me.”  
  
“And you’re not to go near Bellamy again. Do you hear me? I fucking forbid it.”  
  
Ephram didn’t think he’d ever heard Freddie even _approaching_ this level of incensed before. Certainly not directed at him. But here his husband was calling him willfully simplistic and laying out his time in the joint in terms of survival, sounding fierce and fae and so sure of himself. And although Ephram was grateful for it, that this was Freddie’s chief impulse considering the things Ephram had said, he still said in his church voice, “Survival didn’t mean I had to become worse than an animal. I should've been able to rise above all that. Not stoop to their level and enjoy it.”  
  
He frowned. “I don’t think you judge me, Freddie, it ain’t that,” Ephram protested. “I don’t think you would, but I’m scared that it would follow us and that you’d think about it when you look at me. And _don’t_ say it’s the same with you, because them things you went through when you was on the street ain’t the same. I wouldn’t get upset thinking bout the things you went through and what you suffered. And you know why?”  
  
He yanked angrily in Freddie’s arms, but his fairy was using those significant muscles to their full extent and Ephram found himself good and trapped. “Because there’s a part of me that _liked_ seeing it, Freddie, when your Trapper took us there into that red room. You don’t remember, I got that memory now, but I’m sure you know what sort of things went on in the red room. That trick you had that night - he hurt you and raped you and I watched and part of me _got off_ on it.”  
  
Huffing his disgust with himself, Ephram eyed Freddie as his jaw worked, the muscles jumping. “I don’t look at Ruby or other folks and think about hurting them. But I do think about hurting _you_ , Freddie.” Now that the confession was out, Ephram found he couldn’t stop, the topic of Bellamy completely falling by the wayside.  
  
“I think about it, I _fantasize_ about it, I wanna hit you so your mouth bursts with blood and I wanna sink my teeth into you till it looks like bear traps and I wanna _choke_ you, Freddie, I wanna beat you with my belt until you’re covered in stripes, I wanna–” Ephram drew in a painfully sharp breath, his eyes rolling as his lips pulled back from his teeth, staying like that for a moment before his face came out of its rictus and he jerked in Freddie’s grasp like electric currents were running through his body.  
  
“So tell me now, Freddie,” Ephram said, his voice barely a mumble and dry as bleached bones. “If you know me. If there ain’t nothin’ I could say that would disappoint you. That I ain’t a monster.”  
  
“You’ve got me confused with Ruby if you think that God-bothering pulpit voice is going to give you any sway at all over me, love,” Freddie muttered acidly. But as Ephram continued, the fairy fell quiet, listening - with no small degree of pain - to what his husband had to say; continuing, at the same time, to hold him still.  
  
A red room meant Hamburg, most likely - there had been red rooms in Amsterdam and Antwerp too, but it was Hamburg where they’d been the most prevalent - and Freddie had no trouble at all imagining what Ephram could have seen there. Prostitution wasn’t exactly a low-risk profession, and Freddie had gambled and lost more than once.  
  
But in spite of the ugliness of Ephram’s words - of the sentiment - and the knee-jerk way that the fairy flinched to hear those things come from the man he loved, Freddie took a deep breath, and said nothing. Just forced it down, and held it away from himself, refusing to truly let it touch him until he understood better what it meant.  
  
He managed to insulate himself so completely that he didn’t react at all, until Ephram began to convulse; and then he pressed his forehead to his husband’s temple, still holding him close, murmuring, “I’ve got you, sweetheart; I’m not letting go… I love you…” until it passed, leaving his witch even more scraped raw than before.  
  
And when Ephram laid down his challenge, seemingly attempting to call the fairy’s bluff, Freddie just said softly, his voice rough but steady, “If you were a monster, you’d have done it by now.”  
  
A tear slid down his cheek as he pressed a kiss into Ephram’s hair, though the tone of his voice didn’t change. “If you want me to believe that you’re the beast you claim to be, then prove it. Make a case for yourself, and tell me why.”  
  
“Why did it turn you on to see someone hurt me that way? Why me and not Ruby? Because I still don’t believe it, Ephram - if you’re a monster, you’ve got to do better than that.”  
  
What Freddie was asking was unfathomable. Not that Ephram didn’t understand, or that Freddie was challenging him in this way, but that Freddie had sorted through the sordid horror of what Ephram had confessed, sifted it out, and instead of getting dramatic about it, Freddie had formulated a query that would force Ephram to really, _actually_ , think about it.  
  
Ephram was so grateful he felt like it was spilling out of him in streams.  
  
“I think…” he started hesitantly, then stopped, shaking his head. In a more resolute voice, sounding like his usual self, Ephram began again.  
  
“I could never do that to Ruby on account of Ruby’s a woman,” he said. “I just couldn’t. Men who hurt women like that should be put down like dogs, is my general opinion on the matter.” On this point, Ephram was unshakable. He worried from time to time that he might hit Ruby, that someday blood would out and he’d prove to be like some of the men back in the holler – but he never conjured up images of it and luxuriated in them. Not like he did with Freddie.  
  
No longer trying to move away from Freddie, Ephram pushed against him to bolster himself for what he was trying to work through for the first time in his life. “I reckon,” he said, “I reckon when it comes to fucking men, my experiences have been overwhelmingly … bloody. Maybe that should have turned me off of mixing violence and sex but it didn’t. After I got back into the free world I chased it down and it was … what I wanted.”  
  
Ephram squirmed, uncomfortable with what he was revealing – particularly since it was somewhat new for him as well. “I got off on the idea of me getting treated like that, so I dunno … somewhere in my head could be I put that on you, too.” He made a noise of distress after saying this, its ugliness exposed to the air after so long buried.  
  
Tipping his head back to look up at Freddie, Ephram mumbled, “I love you so much, Freddie, like I was born needing to find you, and this is what it means, I guess. I want every fucking thing you got, Freddie, I wanna see you in every situation so I can know it all. All of you. _Every piece_ of you.” He clenched his teeth, groaning through them. “Even your pain.”  
  
As Ephram began to speak again - summoning the wherewithal from somewhere deep inside himself to answer Freddie’s questions, his voice losing its harshness and becoming again the burnt-sugar drawl that the fairy loved so well - Freddie adjusted his grip on his husband, still holding him tightly, but no longer restraining him. He let the ferocity slip away, replacing it with tenderness again; because, to Freddie’s way of thinking, in Ephram’s long and painful thirty-five years, tenderness was something that he deserved so much more of than he had ever received.  
  
And in the wake of a confession like this, he knew how very badly his husband would need it.  
  
“First off,” the fairy murmured, “-you’re contradicting yourself, sweetheart. Because if you were really that foul, it wouldn’t matter that Ruby’s a woman. You’d want to hurt her simply because she was there. Because you could.”  
  
“That might even make it sweeter.”  
  
He paused for a long moment, focused on the disgust he’d heard in Ephram’s voice as his witch had admitted to his violent fantasies, before going on. “And secondly…” Freddie said softly, “-what makes you think that you don’t have it? All of me. Because whatever you saw in that red room - whatever pain and degradation was in there - I showed it to you. I knew what we’d see, and I brought you there to make it yours.”  
  
“Think about it, Ephram - when Martin hurt me, when he left me tortured and terrified and barely alive, you were the one who I called. You were the one I let see me, broken and battered. You’re the one who knows what the worst of my pain looks like, sweetheart. You’re the one - the _only one_ \- I bring it to.”  
  
‘Because I’m yours. Body and soul, in this life and all the others after it - just like you’re mine. And I am _not afraid of you_.”  
  
“How many times, love, have I put myself in your hands, hm? Do you think that I don’t know that you could do all those things to me easily if you chose to? How badly you could hurt me if you wanted to? I’m not a stupid man, Ephram - of course, I know. But still, I offer myself up, don’t I? Over and over again.”  
  
“Do you remember,” Freddie went on, low and gentle, in Ephram’s ear, “-when I told you how I was caned at school? How it excited you to think about it? And do you remember what I said when I saw that? I offered to let you do it, Ephram - and I still would. Because I trust you.”  
  
“You and I, darling, we know better than most people ever will how closely tied sex and violence can be - and I could never ever fault you for the way that you respond to that. You were steeped in it, sweetheart; conditioned to it. For you, there’s control there, catharsis. But for me… all there’s ever been is fear. Your knots are tied tight, and I’ve bloodied my fingers and dulled my teeth scrabbling to get mine loose again.”  
  
Freddie’s lips moved against the side of his witch’s head, his words quiet, but firm. “We’ve both done what we had to with what we were given - and I will never think you’re monstrous for that.”  
  
“You could have done those things to me, sweetheart. Hundreds of times over by now, you could have done them - but you didn’t. So why is that, hm? Why have you never touched me that way? Why have you never let yourself?”  
  
Nuzzling at his witch’s temple, Freddie took a long slow deep breath, and then said softly, “I love you every bit as much as you love me, Ephram. And I need you in all the same ways. Maybe even more so. Because my love for you is greedy. It’s hungry, and wanting, and desperate. I want to be first, and best. And I want to glory in it.”  
  
Freddie sighed. “Love is beautiful - but it has its grubby little corners too, sweetheart. And that’s not something I think we need to be ashamed of.”  
  
He tilted his husband’s face up to make him look him in the eye. “We never need to be ashamed of _anything_.”  
  
“You are not a monster, Ephram. So stop this rubbish. You came home to me this morning - so stop this and _come bloody home_.”  
  
Sitting still and quiet, Ephram listed to his Freddie methodically, thoroughly dismantle the concerns that Ephram had laid out, halting and inarticulate. And as Freddie’s kind, firm voice ran down the list and fully repudiated so many of the guilts and pains that Ephram had frightened up, what the witch was left most with was astonishment. How Freddie spoke as if this were a subject he had native knowledge of, he was so certain in the love they shared and Ephram’s own self-control.  
  
Ephram had never been certain that he’d been blessed with a deep enough store of willpower; it seemed to him that he’d used it all up before that fateful night with Marigold. Freddie, on the other hand, seemed to believe that not only did Ephram have a reservoir of temperance and forbearance, but he’d tapped it enough that Freddie had never thought of him as a threat. Despite this evil entity that had shaped Ephram since he was a boy, despite the propensity for violence that Freddie had witnessed up close and never flinched from … except.  
  
Except when Ephram used that violence against himself. Freddie had made him promise not to, and Ephram had obeyed, stretching this sphere of influence to just about every part of his life. For as long as Ephram could remember, he’d thought it wouldn’t be that terrible if he were to die, that anything good he managed to bring to the world was cancelled out a thousand times over by Anaxis. But he couldn’t die, because the demon was his responsibility. It would be cowardly to kill himself. And so he went with something more Biblical, and scourged his flesh as Anaxis did the same inside him.  
  
Freddie was the first person to tell Ephram that he could stop his penance, that he didn’t have to seek out punishment. Self-inflicted or otherwise.  
  
“You’re ruthless, anybody ever tell you that?” Ephram asked, stroking Freddie’s jawline before he had to let his heavy hand drop. “You fuckin’ knocked down all the worries I had, so easily I feel dumb for having had em for so long.” There was nothing but relief in Ephram’s voice though, as he gazed up at Freddie as if his fairy had given him a new lease on life. “Thank you,” Ephram said softly. “I know you’re gonna say I don’t need to, but I _am_ thankful. That I found you and you wanted to be with me and that you wear that demon brand for me and that you wanna make up for all the things I never had. And that you take my side, Freddie, that part’s … I can’t even say how much that means. Except that I’ll come home to you. All the way home.”  
  
Freddie smiled gently when his witch touched his jaw, his eyes prickling again as Ephram thanked him for all the things between them that needed no acknowledgement at all - things born out of the kind of love that Freddie had never known until Ephram, and was certain he would never know again after him - and he nodded, accepting the gratitude, as he pulled his husband closer.  
  
“Good,” he murmured thickly, “Thank-you, sweetheart. Because I can’t bear to be without you.”  
  
“Freddie,” Ephram said after a few moments in a small, frightened voice, “Freddie, can you ... do something for me now, and put me somewhere safe? I don’t – my head’s all fuckin’ hazy, I don’t recall which way’s the bedroom, my legs, they feel like they gone all dangly and they’s too damn long I can’t control em Freddie, Freddie, _Freddie_ I’m sorry I asked you that, to put me someplace safe.” He was barely above a gasping whisper now. “You can't do that, Anaxis is _always here_. There ain’t noplace what’s safe for me.”  
  
Freddie gathered Ephram closer as best he could given their awkward position on the floor, his witch’s weight growing progressively deader as his strength seemed to abandon him further. Having been watching them at a slight distance - close enough to attempt to come to Freddie’s aid should the demon do anything untoward, but far enough away so as not to intrude on their privacy - Ollie monitored the man he’d come to think of as a trusted friend with wide worried eyes; a small whine escaping him at the fear in Ephram’s voice when the witch suddenly asked to be moved somewhere safe. And then again at the terrible despairing sound of his resignation that no such place existed. Not for him.  
  
And Freddie glanced up at his familiar, the two of them sharing a small agonized look between them, before turning his attention back to his husband. Stroking Ephram’s hair, and promising, “I’ll keep you as safe as I can, sweetheart.”  
  
Knowing, even as he said it, just how hollow that promise was; in spite of its absolute sincerity.  
  
“So I’m going to carry you up to bed now, yeah?” he went on, “As carefully as I can, love - and I’m so sorry if it hurts. Just bear with me, alright? We’ll go as quick as we can.”  
  
The fairy got up, trying to jar Ephram as little as possible, and hoisted his witch up off the floor, his muscles already straining with the effort only a few seconds in. He’d be exhausted, he knew, by the time he got them both up the stairs - his body still so compromised by the absence of the Bvlgari Blue - but at the same time, he knew that he could manage it. That he _would_ manage it.  
  
Because Ephram asked for so little, and he deserved whatever comfort Freddie could provide him.  
  
However inadequate it might be.  
  
Hearing Ollie whining stirred up a conflicting response in Ephram’s listing, sodden brain; sorrow that he should have upset Oliver that much, and pleasure that the little familiar thought of him so highly. It cheered him a small bit, and he mumbled as Freddie picked him up, “I’ll be okay, Ollie. We all got a long long time together, right? Years’n years’n years.” He gazed up at Freddie, his eyes clouding over and making his momentarily blue eyes milky. “All the time in the world.”  
  
Ephram offered Freddie – his brave, bright, beautiful fairy – a breathy, open-mouthed smile, only enough for his teeth to show behind his parted lips. “My eyes are going,” he said conversationally. “It’s still me though, honey. Don’t be worried. You know the demon don’t ever pretend to be me.”  
  
Freddie had almost tripped twice going up the stairs, his gaze drawn by the insidious creeping whiteness of deterioration that had blotted out his witch’s beautiful blue - but as Ephram tried to reassure him that everything was alright, that he shouldn’t worry, making Freddie’s heart ache even more in the process, the fairy did his best to sound heartened. “I know, love,” he said, growing winded as he carried Ephram into their bedroom, but pressing a kiss to the side of his head regardless, “And I’d always know the difference, even if it did.”  
  
“Keep talking to me if you can though, sweetheart, yeah? I want to hear the sound of your voice.”

By the time Freddie managed to get them both to bed, Ephram had to grab for his husband, fingers grasping and jabbing. “It’ll only be two weeks tops,” he babbled desperately, his eyes gone thick, scaly white and unseeing. “All’s I need is rest, you know I got the constitution of a horse, I’ll get better’n things’ll be just fine, you wait and see.”  
  
Ephram stopped, curling against the mattress and coughing fit to burst. When the coughs finally eased, leaving behind a bloody clump of tissue on the sheets, Ephram laboriously turned to look at Freddie. The stringy, blobby lung tissue caught against his cheek, a gruesome adornment, and the voice that spoke signaled the changeover.  
  
“He’s dying, you know that,” Anaxis said flatly. “No need to put on a brave face, Fairy Freddie. He’s going to die ugly, so you might as well prepare yourself now to spend your last few days together watching him pissing and shitting himself and not recognizing you because his brain’s on fire and he can hardly breathe from the pain.”  
  
Freddie laid Ephram as gently as he could on the bed, his knees watery from the exertion and his own breathing laboured, and nodded - even though his husband could no longer see him - when Ephram grabbed for him, still promising Freddie that he would be fine. That he just needed rest, and a fortnight would see him right again.  
  
“I know you will be,” Freddie repeated, summoning all the strength he had left to keep a vicious hold on himself, refusing to let his voice break, “You’re so strong, love…”  
  
And then he lost Ephram entirely to a fit of coughing so awful that he nearly broke down watching it; helpless and terrified, and sick to his stomach when a bloody piece of viscera landed wetly on the sheets.  
  
Finally though, Ephram rolled back slowly and painfully to face him, and Freddie wiped the mess from his cheek, murmuring, “Let’s get you undressed and settled, and then I’ll go fetch something to clean you up…”  
  
But it was Anaxis who answered him.  
  
“Fuck off,” Freddie spat back, wiping at his eyes, and clenching his jaw; refusing to listen, to believe. Knowing that it lied and clinging to that. “He is _not_ dying. But whatever this is, it’s your bloody fault.”  
  
He glared at the demon, hating it; frightened and angry and exhausted. “Are you listening to me?” he demanded, “Piss off back to the dark and give me my husband again.”  
  
“I’ve got nothing to say to you.”  
  
“I know you don’t.” The demon’s normally silky tones were roughened, strained, and held none of the insouciant flippant tone Anaxis preferred. “But right now he can’t remember how to talk because he’s too busy being terrified of his tongue. He doesn’t remember what it is.”  
  
Anaxis could and had always been able to control Ephram’s body no matter how much pain Ephram himself was feeling, but this was different. The demon had none of Ephram’s magic to patch this all up, and it could feel the witch dying around it. When it came down to it, Anaxis was bordering on desperate to find some way to fix this. “This is fucking _nonsense_ ,” it lamented, hooking one finger in Ephram’s mouth to scoop out a quivering dark blood clot. “I don’t know how to do this! I’ve never had to sustain a life before! We’re out to sea together, Freddie, you and me, both with the same goal.”  
  
The demon frowned, lifting one hand with effort and wiping tears from Ephram’s face. “He’s frightened,” Anaxis reported, rubbing at the wetness on his fingertips. “He thinks he’ll go to Hell. He thinks–” Anaxis paused, reluctantly, and then finished with an aggrieved sigh. “He thinks being with you is all he was allowed of heaven and now he’s meeting his due.”  
  
The talking had taken its toll and Ephram’s body convulsed with coughs again, the force of it leaving him with eyelids fluttering, drooling bloody spit. “I’m putting him out for a while so he can get some rest,” Anaxis mumbled, no finesse to its voice at all anymore. “Right now, Freddie, I know you hate to think it… but I’m the best inside man you’ve got.”  
  
Freddie listened silently as Anaxis spoke, wanting to immediately dismiss everything it said as lies concocted to torment him while it wreaked it’s own internal havoc and horror on Ephram. But sitting there, amidst the bloody evidence of Ephram’s body’s sudden and violent mutiny - sitting there as the monster itself, for the first time since Freddie had known it, seemed joyless and defeated - it was hard not to believe it.  
  
Not when his own gut was telling him the same thing.  
  
But still, Freddie didn’t react.  
  
Instead, without speaking, the fairy moved up on the bed and carefully maneuvered his husband into his arms, holding him gently. Wanting Ephram to feel - even in his sleep, if what Anaxis said was true - that he was there, and that he loved him.  
  
Wanting to assuage his fears in whatever small ways he still could.  
  
And only when Ephram was cradled close again, against his chest, did Freddie deign to address the demon. “Fine,” he said, coldly and quietly, “You tell me whatever it is you think I need to know, and I’ll decide what to do with it.”  
  
“And the rest of the time, you keep your fucking mouth shut. He’s suffering enough as it is.”  
  
Then, closing his eyes, needing some distance from Anaxis and every evil thing that clung to it, Freddie pressed his nose to the crown of Ephram’s head - to the tangled filthy mess of Ephram’s too-long hair - and took a deep breath; sifting through the mingled scents of dirt and damp wood, sea-breeze, fear sweat, and blood, until he found the sweet earthy smell of the man that he loved. It was still there - still _Ephram_ \- and he held it.  
  
He held it inside him until his lungs ached and his eyes filled with tears. And when finally he was forced to let it out again, he began to sob silently.  
  
Because even that loss felt like far too much.


End file.
